Drew Olanoff

Head of Communications, River Studios

Discussion

Hi, I'm Drew Olanoff. I've been a geek my entire life, have written for The Next Web and TechCrunch, done communications at Yahoo, EyeEm, and now at a virtual reality studio River Studios. VR is something very personal for me, and I truly believe that it's our next big platform.

@russ_sm super great question. i see the oculus/facebook tieup as a good thing. facebook really does, for better or for worse, want to connect the world. VR is a powerful connecting medium, or will be. Ads will have to evolve. You'll see pieces as ads (ala McDonalds) so I think it'll be a situation where you know what you're getting into. Also, like games, there's in-experience advertising opportunities. if i see a damn popup in vr, someone is getting yelled at lol.

@laurakb that's tough, but my dad once told me "fuck it, be happy." so i do that. i really enjoy hanging out with kids and animals, i feel like they're the closest source of truth we have as beings on this planet.

@drew "fuck it, be happy" is EXCELLENT advice. I was reading this Motto story today that shared something similar <3 " Like my son tells his toddler sister when she escapes with the entire bag of Doritos, 'Go! Live your best life!'" http://motto.time.com/4259180/or...

@andrewett when I was in my hospital room i tried eden river on gear vr. it a) got me "out" of the hospital, if only for a little bit and b) told me what i wanted to do for the foreseeable future career wise.

@alex being lucky enough to call someone my wife, because my entire life i was told that it'd never happen. i'm too difficult, or i'm too this or that...or feeling down on myself like i couldn't be that big a part of someones life.

@dflanegan doing as many demos as you can and gathering as much feedback as possible. there is a bit of brain trickery going on and none of us really have a full understanding of the impact that immersion into these types of worlds have. just gather info, share, create. repeat.

@machado thank you for asking sir! i'm happy to announce that i had a full body PT scan 2 weeks ago and i'm in full remission. the other day was my one year anniversary of the stem cell transplant. it worked and UCSF is amazing.

@amol_sharma funny story, i actually built chatbots similar to aol's smarter child in my teens and early twenties. seeing it come back is nice. AI is interesting from an assistance standpoint. don't want to see it replace real life though, that's bullshit.

I view oculus as the Betamax of vr. That is timing is everything. When do you think VR will be a true mass market product? Will the winners be companies providing the "guts"/support (cloud) vs the hardware manufacturers? (Spent much of my life working with/for physicians - Healthcare is such an opportunity)

@alaskanjackson it's way way too early to call for winners or losers. i mean, pepsi/coke. android/apple, lyft/uber etc etc etc. Google/HTC/Sony/Oculus/Samsung/Apple? are all pushing boundaries. Having that many talented folks on one platform, VR, is unheard of. Literally unheard of.